gement | Reading

Fandom: Arcane
Characters/Pairings: Meljayvik
Rating & Warnings: Explicit. Features D/S, Mommy/Daddy kink, Pup kink
Estimated Fic Length: over 8k
Notes: Need help with grammar, phrasing, and some sentence structure.

Current Mood: accomplished

js_thrill

I suspect I have higher tolerance than most for books with unpleasant protagonists, provided the book recognizes that the protagonist sort of sucks. I have very low tolerance for books where the protagonist sucks and the book thinks the protagonist is A+ super amazing. Those grate on me and I really get very annoyed. But I think even a little acknowledgment that the protagonist has flaws can smooth things for me quite a bit.

Kaaro, the protagonist of Tade Thompson’s Rosewater, is not a particular pleasant or likable person. He has lots of moral failings, from casual sexism to a general lack of interest in others, a frustrating passivity with respect to the morality of how he is using his psychic powers for his main job (government interrogations) and/or freelance jobs (finding lost things, bank security, etc.). He is a bit better morally now than he was as a kid (stealing things he didn’t need just because his psychic powers helped him know where valuables were), but he between his own lack of moral direction and the forces taking advantage of his powers, he is not much improved, and certainly doing more consequential things than stealing a few hundred bucks or some jewelry.

I don’t think we are supposed to see Kaaro as admirable or flawless. I do think we are supposed to find some of his personality charming, which may or may not land, but the most interesting things going on in the story are probably about connection and isolation. Kaaro’s ability is to be connected to other people (via a ubiquitous network of microscopic alien fungus that permits mental and emotional information to be perceived by those who are sensitive like Kaaro). As is often the case with these sorts of stories, we see exploration of identity in relation to how one is delineated from others, how access to someone else’s mind can bring or undermine closeness, how a telepath’s respect for someone’s mental privacy is fundamental to respecting their personhood. While Kaaro is not a great person when it comes to responsible use of telepathy in general, I think the book does a nice job of exploring these familiar themes in an interesting way through this flawed protagonist.

Where the book really stood out for me (and overcame the unnecessary time jumps in narrative presenation) is the alien consciousness and world building for the setting. The Nigeria of 2066 in which the story is set, and the city of Rosewater (which I did enjoy seeing in the different time periods, just maybe not jumping back and forth between them so much), were great! Rich settings! The different forces at work (Wormwood, Section 45, the Political Dissidents, the swaths of people seeking healing), were all great parts of the setting and world!

This is the first Tade Thompson I’ve read; I’ll probably read more.

scifirenegade posting in

betaplease

Fandom: Anders als die Andern | Different from the Others (1919)
Characters/Pairings: Else Sivers, Paul Körner
Rating & Warnings: General and gen
Estimated Fic Length: over 700 words
Notes: I'm mostly looking for SPaG, any inconsistencies in the writing and ways to better show the characters bonding. I feel the ending is quite abrupt too.
I understand if the source material is niche. The Wikipedia page has a pretty good summary.

js_thrill

I forgot to finish my retrospective! I’ll do it soon (probably!) (maybe!) (hopefully!)

Instead, I am going to talk about how my kobo has made me better at using the library, because it has good Libby integration, and the primary upshot of this so far has been for me to DNF several books.

Historically, I don’t even start reading library books, really, before they are due back. I just check them out, the spirit fails to move me to start reading them, I read some other book instead, and then return the book unread to the library. (The beginning of If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler, where Calvino describes all the piles of books including the ones judging you for not getting around to reading them, really speaks to me!)

Anyway I searched for recommendations of books like Piranesi, or A Deadly Education, or Ancillary Justice, or Tombs of Atuan, or Constellation Games, or The Locked Tomb or Count of Monte Cristo, and got a bunch of recommendations.

So far the best of those was the Black Tides of Heaven by Neon Yang. A messily plotted novel that works despite a lot of narrative jumping around, partially because the world building is clearly fully developed but not over exposited on the page. I was left wanting more, some threads didn’t go anywhere, or felt like rug pulls, but sometimes a messy interesting thing is better than a neat boring thing. (Usually. Always? Definitely usually.)

The worst, for me, for sure, was The Memory Police, which had a super compelling premise (an authoritarian island culture where the government disappears things physically and from people’s memories). The premise was hampered by completely incoherent logistics/worldbuilding. The narrator, for example, does remember things that have been disappeared, and tells us about them. But the narrator is explicitly not immune to the memory erasing powers of the authorities. So how can the narrator remember birds, the ferry, etc.? Good question! Distracting question! I read some reviews where I learned that the opening scene where the narrator finds out about perfume (which just seems like water to the narrator, having been influenced by the disappearance of the category “prank gifts” I guess?

utilitymonstergirl

I did not listen to anywhere near enough new albums to make any meaningful "Best of the Year" judgements, but here are some albums I enjoyed and have something to say about:

UNKILLABLE ANGEL (Ada Rook)

Discussed here.

Dead Channel Sky (clipping.)

clipping. is back on their sci-fi concept album bullshit, god bless. This album is a bit uneven for me, but at its best, it has some very sharp things to say about historical memory and lotus-eating and getting by in a world strangled by technocrats. Also, it's frequently grimly funny as hell, and Daveed is a great style-chameleon.

Favorite Track: The most fun track is Code, but the best artistic achievement is Welcome Home Warrior; Daveed and Aesop Rock as two delightful dorks chopping it up on one of the album's most guttingly bleak tracks. Why bother with the intractable problems outside when you can just play hero in a walled garden?

Stardust (Danny Brown et al.)

Discussed here.

try (DOOR EATER)

I'm glad that both Ada and Devi have kept busy with a bunch of other projects post-breakup, and this is a fascinating collab album between Ada and Lauren Bousfield. It doesn't have the seamless duet chemistry of Black Dresses, but it's not trying to; this isn't Run the Jewels, it's Scaring the Hoes, two subculturally-acclaimed weirdos playing off each other for a dozen-plus tracks. They've also made an eight-minute metal track with all the lyrics taken from Proust for the Castration Movie soundtrack; shine on, you baffling motherfuckers.

Favorite Track: I really dig laughter as a look as what a fairly accessible, danceable track looks like from this team, and it's still Like This.

SISTER (Frost Children)

Porter Robinson's digipop throwback SMILE! :D just wasn't working for me, and the reason clicked when he got absolutely washed by Frost Children's feature toward the end. Recession-pop resurrections work best when they have an edge of obnoxious fagginess that couldn't have been at the forefront in the early 2010s, and Porter just doesn't have the sauce. But Frost Children certainly does, and it's on full display in SISTER, an album displaced in time from my middle-school years now that I realize I'm not Too Good For This.

Favorite Track: WHAT IS FOREVER FOR is swinging for the God-damned fences and by golly, it works. Transsexual Ke$ha is all I really wanted, I suppose.

Constant Companions (Deluxe Edition) (Jamie Paige)

Jamie Paige is one of the best English-language vocaloid producers working today, and she's made a tour de force that freely flows between her voice, seven different vocaloids, and a stable collaborators. She has a great knack for lyrical flourishes that avoid being too-clever-by-half Nerd Songwriting, backed up with leitmotifs and humor and vulnerability. Also, shoutout to her work with FLAVOR FOLEY, her music circle with Vane and Ricedeity that has produced my second-favorite song about cannibalism.

Favorite Track: I love how ROT FOR CLOUT plays on Kasane Teto's indignant-failgirl reputation with some gutting emotional depth. i don’t like what’s at my core / pray to god to fix my soul / but i don't need god’s forgiveness— / i need yours.

Revengeseekerz and ♡ (Jane Remover)

God, this album fucks hard. it's a hell of a showcase of Jane's skill and energy while still preserving the DNA of their Dariacore projects. How are they seven years younger than me. Who authorized this.

Favorite Track: Jane came out as an unnanounced guest for Psychoboost at the emotional climax of the Stardust show I was at. It can't be anything else.

//

This R&B-inflected EP has a lot of juicy Themes around navigating heterosexuality as a semi-famous transfem. I feel like they'd have a lot to discuss with Sabrina Carpenter.

Favorite Track: I hooted and hollered at the Philadelphia Train Station jumpscare in Flash in the Pan. Wonderfully melancholy jam, too.

I Love My Computer (Ninajirachi)

I think that once you make a beautifully glossy pop song about wanting to fuck your computer, you become an honorary trans woman. It adds some nicely jarring texture to this set of nostalgia-jams, along with Infohazard's reminiscing about coming across snuff videos. She's already gotten Frost Children to remix the computer-fucking song; I have high hopes for her Chappell Roan-style skill of Trojan-horsing freak shit within approachable pop production.

Favorite Track: I am the perfect demographic mark for iPod Touch, and putting it right before Fuck My Computer is really damn funny.

Neighborhood Gods Unlimited (Open Mike Eagle)

I haven't yet delved much into Open Mike Eagle's back catalog, but this is a wonderfully weird set of reflections on alienation in all its forms. It's funny, bittersweet, cutting, dark, surreal, and pensive, often all in the space of one song.

Favorite Track: after half a decade straight of working retail, me and Aquil stealing stuff from work is a big fuckin' mood. I have had plenty of Wack Check Burgers in my time.

GOODNIGHT HYPNOPOMP (Stomach Book)

I didn't listen to this album in full until after I saw her perform live - hell of a show, full of joyous trans kids half my age who get to grow up with stuff that came out when I was in college or later. This is a great jam for when I'm in my chuuni theater-kid bag, and it's been a great jumping-off point into the Crash Blossoms Clique expanded universe. Shoutout to Rural Internet for making an album featuring both her and RXKNephew.

Favorite Track: BAMBI takes this title on the strength of a banger verse from zombAe, another great discovery I've made this year.

Love & Ponystep (Vylet Pony)

I liked Girls Who Are Wizards well enough, but this feels like the fully-evolved form of what it was reaching for. The sick wubz and recurring producer tags and Lore are all still here, plus so much more: copious Call of Duty samples, recession-pop pastiche and interpolation, Lenval Brown (the Disco Elysium narrator) talking with a pony named Top Five Videos. As the Nostalgia Threshold starts to absorb the 2010s, this is a beautifully earnest showcase of all its most glorious trash.

Favorite Track: I'd be disgracefully lying if I said anything other than Dual Headed Hydranoid. Who else is doing 2012 club-rap about curbstomping Rainbow Dash. Bouncing on that Betty / Tac insertion, hold me steady is a stunningly tight transbian sex/military hardware joke; I wish I could write Replaceable Parts gags that good.

outstretched posting in

betaplease

Hello, this is your mod. I've finished cleaning up the tags for the new year.

I'm starting to notice that some people are using this community in an attempt to find an editor for their full, original novels - works 50,000+ words or more. I worry that

betaplease is being used to take advantage of beta-readers for commercial work. This is a space for fandom and fandom-adjacent works, and part of the spirit of fandom (on the fic side, anyway) is that we do not make money on our editing or writing.

After some thought, I've decided the rule is, if you are intending to publish your writing with the goal of making money, it does not belong here on betaplease.

If you are publishing your work with the intent of making money, you should be paying an editor for a professional pass. This is for three reasons:

If you are trying to make money on your work, asking someone else for free work so that you can profit is unjust and disrespectful.
Frankly speaking, it is extremely unlikely that you are going to find any editors who are willing to edit a piece of that length for free. Even 10k can be exhausting, especially if you are expecting a professional level editing job.
If you are publishing in a commercial capacity, then your work should get a more professional type of editing pass than what we here in this community can give for free. The amount of effort an editor is going to give a story of over 50,000 words, to a stranger, for characters they don't even know and aren't guaranteed to enjoy reading about, for free, is minimal. You and your readers deserve more than the bare minimum.

I myself have worked as a professional freelance editor for over 15 years. I made this community because I love editing and I love fandom, and I want to support both. Using this community to find free editing for commercial projects feels like you're not respecting editors and our craft. Editing, just like writing or art, is a skill that is honed through years of effort.

With that said, I am not banning original fiction, and any novel-length works posted to

betaplease before now will be allowed to remain. And of course, if you are looking for an editor for your 50,000+ word original fiction that you plan to publish on AO3 and are never going to try to make money on, by all means, you are welcome here. However, if I notice continued posts in this direction from this point on, I will return this space to being strictly focused on fandom works only. I have also updated the rules to be explicit on this point.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for always supporting this small community. Best wishes to your writing and editing adventures in the new year.

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gement

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Page generated Dec. 31st, 2025 08:19 pm

House of Forgotten Thoughts

(just down the street from Cain and Abel)

Reading

Beta Need - Arcane - Meljayvik - Explicit/R18/NSFW

Rosewater by Tade Thompson

Beta Needed: Anders als die Andern | Different from the Others (1919)

Oops!

Some Neat Music From 2025

All clean for 2026; a note on Original Works

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October 2021

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